She was his great love, the woman he’d adored since they were children. But a few months into their marriage, Elizabeth Beck was abducted, then found dead in a ditch, the brutalized victim of a serial killer. Not even the killer’s capture and conviction could bring comfort to her devastated husband, Dr. David Beck.

Now, eight years later, Beck’s life is ripped apart once again, this time by a mysterious e-mail suggesting that Elizabeth may still be alive. It could be just a cruel joke, but Beck, still grieving, cannot abandon hope. The trail to the truth is filled with treachery, and Beck uncovers one terrible deed after another, some recent, some stretching back to before Elizabeth’s abduction. What’s the most frightening of all is that the trail leads directly to him, setting him up as the prime suspect in the crimes.

Now, as Beck eludes the police, he must find his hidden enemy, a person without remorse who's using him as a pawn to keep the truth covered up. In this deadly game of lies and manipulation, Beck must decide whom to trust and whom to fear—because one wrong move could end his search for Elizabeth and cost him his own life.

Product Description

From Amazon

David Beck has rebuilt his life since his wife's murder eight years ago, finishing medical school and establishing himself as a pediatrician, but he's never forgotten the woman he fell in love with in second grade. And when a mysterious e-mail arrives on the anniversary of their first kiss, with a message and an image that leads him to wonder whether Elizabeth might still be alive, Beck will stop at nothing to find the truth that's eluded him for so many years. A powerful billionaire is equally determined to make sure his role in her disappearance never comes to light, even if it means destroying an innocent man.

In David Beck, Harlan Coben, the author of the popular series starring sports agent Myron Bolitar (Darkest Fear et al.) has created a protagonist who shares many of Bolitar's best qualities--he's a decent, generous, gentle guy whose loyalty to those he loves is unquestionable. So when he discovers that people he was close to may be responsible not only for Elizabeth's murder but also the "accidental" death of his father, Beck's sense of betrayal is as understandable to the reader as his uncharacteristically violent reaction. Coben is a skillful storyteller with a gift for creating likable characters caught up in circumstances that illuminate their complex emotional lives and deep humanity. This should be the thriller that breaks this talented writer out of the mystery genre and earns him the recognition he deserves. --Jane Adams--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Every writer likes to stretch his legs, and here Coben, author of seven acclaimed Myron Bolitar mysteries (Darkest Fear, etc.), stretches his. He doesn't quite kick his reputation aside in the process. This thriller, Coben's first non-Bolitar novel, is a breezy enough read, but it's not up to snuff. It's got a nifty setup, though. David Beck and Elizabeth Parker, just-married childhood sweethearts, are vacationing at the Beck family retreat when Beck is knocked unconscious and Elizabeth is kidnapped. Cut to eight years later: Beck is a young physician working with ghetto kids in Manhattan, and Elizabeth, we learn, is dead, victim of a serial killer known as KillRoy. Or is she? For immediately after two bodies eight years old are uncovered on the Beck land, Beck receives a series of e-mails apparently from Elizabeth. His frantic search to find out if she lives dovetails with the equally frenzied efforts of cops to pin Elizabeth's murder on Beck, as well as the antic moves of a mysterious billionaire an old friend of the Beck family and his two hired thugs to frame Beck for that murder. Beck finds himself a man on the run from the cops his only ally a black drug dealer whose child he's treating for hemophilia caught in an overcomplicated tangle of lies and vengeance. Coben knows how to move pages, and he generates considerable suspense, but there's little new here. The narrative style is cloned from James Patterson, alternating first-person with third. The villains, particularly the billionaire and a Chinese martial artist, are as old as mid-Elmore Leonard or even Chandler. The black drug dealer isn't a character, he's a plot device, and the climax packs the emotional wallop of a strong episode of The Rockford Files. (June 19)Forecast: Heavy-hitting blurbs from Jeffery Deaver and Phillip Margolin, among others, indicate more about the solidarity of the mystery community than about this book's excellence, but should attract browsers. The publisher will pitch this as a summer beach read, and it's not a bad one. In fact, it may outsell Coben's mysteries, despite its flaws.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Most helpful customer reviews

I am not much of a Coben fan. I've only read one of his other books and it was so cheezy and awful I swore I would never read another. So I came to this novel skeptical. I was very surprised when I found myself not wanting to put it down.

Coben was able to get me to care about the characters. Not just the main characters but almost all of them. I appreciate it when an author cares enough to give the people in his novel some back story so I can see them as more than caricatures. The best part is that you don't realize he's doing it. There is never a lull in the action while he develops the backstory. Everything flows remarkably well.

The most compelling aspect of this story is it's unpredictability. I always thought I knew where the story was going and I was always wrong. I love that in a novel and Tell No One does it wonderfully. It's packed with action, suspense, a great love story and a healthy dose of mystery.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone. It's the perfect lazy weekend novel because you won't want to stop reading once you start.

"Tell No-One", first published in 2001, is Harlan Coben's eighth book - though is his first not to feature Myron Bolitar. Instead, the book's hero is David Beck. He'd known his wife, Elizabeth, from childhood - they'd met when they were seven, had their first kiss at twelve underneath a tree at Lake Charmaine and married at twenty-five. (Lake Charmaine was once a kids' summer camp, and is now owned by David's grandfather). After their first kiss, they carved their initials on the accompanying tree and, being a very cheesy couple, returned every year to add another notch beneath them. However, the evening they add their thirteenth notch, the couple are attacked - David is left for dead, while Elizabeth is abducted. Three days later, Elizabeth's body is found and is later identified by her father - from the signature branding, it seems the couple had been attacked by the serial killer Elroy "KillRoy" Kellerton.

Time moves on, though David remains single and never properly gets over Elizabeth's death. Eight years later, he's working as a paediatrician, with the majority of his patients on Medicaid. Unfortunately, events are about to bring what happened at Lake Charmaine back to the surface. The first thing provides possibly the biggest shock of them all - an email from Elizabeth, containing phrases only she should've known. The same afternoon, David is contacted by the local Sheriff about two bodies that have just been found near the lake. A baseball bat buried with them has blood traces on it that matches David's blood group - B positive. However, while it's not entirely clear what part - if any - these men played in the attack on David and Elizabeth, things aren't about to get any better.

This is the third Coben novel I've read. All were enjoyable, but each is dragged down by Coben's penchant for complex plots that often veer into the unbelievable. He also has an unfortunate tendency to carry some characters from one novel to another. This is particularly grueling because Coben's characters aren't well developed to begin with. All that said and done, Coben is a thoroughly enjoyable read. His plots, as stretched as they become, have a glow of craftsmanship to them. They definitely do propel you through the story. The characters, flat as they often are, still have enough heft to keep your interest. In short, Coben and in this case "Tell No One" are just plain fun reads. They will keep your interest. I intend to pursue all of Coben's novels, not only because they are fun reading, but because this writer has a future and could indeed turn out to be one of the best suspense novelists of all time. It's kind of fun to watch his growth.Jerry

If you enjoyed Coben's Myron Bolitar novels and are expecting great things from this novel, don't read it! I love the Myron series and I have never been more disappointed in a book as I was in this one.One of the things that I enjoyed so much about the Myron books was the witty dialogue and likeable characters (like Win and Esperanza). In this book, Coben tried to be too serious so the dialogue was very sappy and unoriginal (the same goes for the characters). The readers are also treated to the main character's constant running social commentary on the lower class and how some criminals are just misunderstood. "Don't judge a book by its cover" stuff.Another problem that made me uninterested in all the characters was the fact that the good guys are ridiculously good (the main character, his wife, and his sister ALL work for the poor), the bad guys are ridiculously evil (the evil billionaire and his unbelieveably sadistic hitman), and, in classic Harlan Coben style, the cops investigating are all dumb, bull-headed creeps who, if they were any worse, would be wearing swastikas on their arms. Oh yeah, and I forgot the "look at me, I'm so politically correct" lesbian couple, the typical boisterous defense attorney, and the drug dealer with the heart of gold.If you're a Harlan Coben fan, stick to his Myron Bolitar novels. This is like a Myron book without any witty dialogue, likeable characters, or interesting plot developments. Coben's best work is clearly behind him unless he resurrects Myron, I don't think it's going to get better.